


Dual purposes

by Entomancy



Series: Gods and Monsters [3]
Category: The Yogscast
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-28
Updated: 2013-09-28
Packaged: 2017-12-27 21:32:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/983854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Entomancy/pseuds/Entomancy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Nano's rather explosive exit from Sipsco, Ridge has a deeper discussion with his unexpected protégé about what it means to be a demigod.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dual purposes

Nano wasn’t hard to find. Not that anyone really was – for him – but this time all Ridge had to do was follow the faint trail of smouldering anger, bleeding out across his more specific senses like a curl of black ink in clear water. What was rather surprising was _where_ the sense was coming from.

The edge of the arena yielded to his presence – welcoming, as it ever was – and he looked closely at the new rend in that boundary layer, where something had torn its way through the meniscus of possibility that separated this bubble of personalised reality from the Stream itself. He had brought Nano here often enough now; testing at first, curious, and later giving over more and more control of the proto-arena to his unexpected protégé, as her surprising skills unfolded. She’d never come here on her own before, though.

He ran the torn edges between his fingers thoughtfully. The question was – of course – which _aspect_ of her had managed this particular leap. The sense of sharp rage was clear on the rip here, caught like blood on broken glass, and Ridge drew a thin thread of tangled memory from the echoes.

_Laughter – and the spit-hiss of catching fuses, as she had dived aside – taking what cover she could with the shockwave sudden at her heels, peppering her shielding arms with blasted debris – as her breath caught in her throat, shocked at the the idle-ease of –_

_– **betrayal** – foolish to think otherwisse – always the ssame, the farmer – laughing and joking and ssee how much he would like it - ssoon now – sssoon – _

_– and she could feel herself slipping again, feel the sharpening edges begin to catch into place – and she needed to be somewhere else, somewhere **safe** – just for now –_

Ridge broke the link, frowning slightly at the two-sided thoughts, as he drew the split boundary together again and he turned back into the waiting emptiness of the unstaged arena.

There was a log there now – green wood, roughly cut – floating in the middle of nothing, with a small figure sitting atop it, and he drifted towards the odd little tableau. Nano had her legs drawn up, arms wrapped around her knees, and was glaring forward at nothing in particular. Her clothing was scorched and muddy, and she was surrounded by the faint scent of burning hair.

“Rough day?” Ridge settled down beside her and reached over, plucking a stray bit of shattered brick out of her plait.

“Go away,” she muttered into her folded arms, not looking at him. There was a slight blurring to the shape of her, this close, and Ridge watched a few traces of purple scatter and spin across the back of her hands, like blown dust, before fading again. He lounged back against the air.

“Tricky. If you didn’t want my attention, you should’ve picked a different sulking site. I tend to notice incursions here.”

“I’m not _sulking_ ,” she snapped, hugging her knees a little tighter to her chest. “And I didn’t pick – I mean, I guess _I_ did, but not – I didn’t want to – ” she cut off, and Ridge raised an eyebrow.

“Bored of brooding in the Nether?”

“Sshut up,” Nano hissed, and it _was_ a hiss this time, the double-layer voice tugging strangely at normal sound, and she shook her head violently. Ridge sat back up and laid a hand carefully on the girl’s shoulder. She was shaking, more than it appeared.

“What happened, to get you all split up?” he asked, quietly. Nano’s eyes narrowed; they were darker than they usually were, glinting harshly as she continued to glare out into nowhere.

“Like you don’t know,” she retorted, but Ridge just laughed.

“I don’t watch _everywhere_ at once. It’d spoil all the interesting surprises.”

Nano snorted – then hesitated. Just when Ridge was starting to wonder if he needed to push further, she spoke again.

“Sips blew me up,” she said, flatly. “Sjin laughed. I don’t – I can’t – ” she stopped again and held one arm out in front of her, as a faint flutter of purple mottles washed down her fingers. Her expression twisted and she shut screwed her eyes shut again.

“He laughed. I couldn’t get it to work, I didn’t _know_. And then I did, and I remembered and I was so _angry_ and…” she dropped the hand again, her voice cracking a little – but it was definitely _Nano’s_ voice this time. Ridge leaned over and caught her hand, gently easing her round to face him, and ran his thumb over the little smears of darkened flesh.

“The lesson today is about duality,” he said, tapping fingers either side of the patch, and dipped down until he was able to catch her fluctuating gaze. “Being two sides of the same coin.”

“I don’t want to be like this.” Nano flexed her fingers, but the purple flesh didn’t change, still settled alongside her more usual appearance, and her lips thinned as she stared at the markings. Ridge shrugged.

“Even I can’t do anything about that.”

“Can’t – or won’t?” She glanced back at him, sharp again, and Ridge shook his head.

“That’s not a very useful distinction.”

“It is to me.”

“You’ve seen me,” he continued, deliberately – because _that_ difference was something she really wasn’t ready for yet – and swept his arms out to either side, displaying himself to the attention. “Better than most. You’ve overseen Games. You’ve seen what I do, what I can be like.”

“A complete bastard?” she snapped, and Ridge grinned at the retort, running a hand back through his hair as he did so.

“Pretty much. But there are those that deem me a miracle, even now – and as many that would call me monster.”

A faint frown nipped at Nano’s brow.

“...you’re not _that_ bad," she muttered.

“Oh, I am.” Ridge leaned back again, lacing his fingers behind his head as he stared up into the empty, endless sky, and felt history swirl around him. “I really am. I’m just a bit more… _connected_ about it. You’ve got a way to go yet.”

There was silence for a while, as they both stared into nothing.

“It’s easier here,” Nano said, finally. She shifted her position on the log, swinging her legs back down to kick her feet over the yawning depth. “I… remember more of it all. How it all fits, how _I_ fit.”

“That’s the point.”

“But I know what I – well, sort of me – ” she corrected, quickly. “I know what _that_ me is planning. But I can’t do anything about it.”

“Of course not.” Ridge straightened up again, and tried to work out how best to put this. “That would be cheating.”

“Cheating?” Nano’s eyes widened as she stared at him, her face a sudden mask of disbelief. “Stopping my weird scarecrow alter-ego messing around with nukes is _cheating?_ ”

“Yes,” Ridge cut her off, receiving a fresh glare in response. “Nano, this here is _my_ space; my little world. If you use what you know here, back out there – then it’s as bad as me doing it. I don’t interfere.”

“Liar!” she shot back and her fists clenched; darker shading began to spill under the nails, creeping back along her fingers. “You interfere _all the time!_ Why is this so different?”

“I don’t interfere,” Ridge repeated, mentally cursing the inexactitude of language. Maybe this should have waited, but there was no going back now. “Not like that. Not with things that _matter_.”

“You won’t even try to… stop me?” Nano’s eyes were fixed on him, very intently, and her lip dipped inwards where she was worrying at it. Ridge held her stare.

“No.”

“ _Why not?_ ” The retort was like a slap, as she rounded on him, swinging up and out into the air until she was level with his face, and he could see the dark veins bleeding out under her skin as the anger surged. She jabbed a suddenly-sharp finger at him, heart-high.

“Why not?” she repeated, half-moving to grab the front of his shirt, then thinking better of it. “They’re your friends! And – and mine I guess, and I don’t _want_ to – not always, not now – ” she cut off again and shrank back, hunching into herself as she folded her arms and looked down sadly.

“I don’t want to hurt people," she muttered as she started to sink, and Ridge let himself drift downwards too. He moved forward and wrapped his arms around the smaller figure, pulling her gently into a ruffled embrace. She tensed, then leaned in, and he rested his chin on top of her head as her shoulders began to shake.

“Yes, you do,” he said, softly. “You really do. You want to see them suffer, and you want to taste the edge on every single scream. You want them bloody and broken and begging – crying out into the darkness, when dawn is so far away and salvation is utterly unthinkable. And you want that, with every fragment of your being, more than almost anything else.”

Nano had gone very still, very tense against him, and Ridge looked out over her head as they sank further down, towards the unformed interface between light and dark that lay beneath them. He let his eyes slide closed.

“Almost as much as you want them to _win_ ,” he continued in the same soft tone. “As much as you want to see them claw their way out of the deepest hell, one shaking step at a time; as much as you need to see them pull each other up, by the same damn bonds you would have shattered to fading dust. You want defiance, and deference, and everything between, and you want to feel it all – _take_ it all – hate and despair and elation and worship, all together, aflame in your soul like nothing else could ever hope to match.”

Nano’s balled fists pressed into his back; less an embrace now than a desperate clutch, and Ridge tightened his own grip a little, as she gave a small, sharp nod – and the sobs began.

The unformed world was going dark, vanishing into thickened midnight below, and Ridge stopped them there, hanging at the interface. It seemed fitting. He stroked a hand very carefully down Nano’s back, the twinned shivers of shaking muscles and shifting skinshapes dancing beneath his fingers.

He remembered this, somewhere back in the twisting labyrinth of his oldest memories. The first time. There would be other times – of course, many, many more – before she would find her own balance, her own peace with whatever she ultimately became, but there was a very particular horror in that first moment of self-recognition. At least he could be sure that _she_ wouldn’t face it alone; that she was here, as safe as he could make her.

Not alone, not banished and burning in the darkness, as even terror ran out.

“It’s the nature of the Game,” he muttered. “The rules; how to play. All the little sacrifices, adding up, where you can control it.”

Nano shuddered again and the sobbing increased, as if some wall inside had fallen to the massing flood. Ridge held on – as the form in his arms rippled and distorted, as the impossible-pitch song of her own power whirled up like a storm, tearing angrily at the raw world around them. Shapes formed and died instantly; half-remembered copies, faces and places, instantly ripped apart again, folded back into the next borrowed visage – prediction and intention playing out around them, a dozen flickers of what might be, pulled out of the pliable reality of this place into a whirling theatre of potential futures.

It all ended in fire. Things tended to, in Ridge’s experience, and he let the blind-white waves of atomic plasma pour across them, let his hair and coat flow and shift along with it, until the wicked, crimson-edged black bore down, folding over the storm-eye pair like a shroud of velvet aftermath.

He just held her. Here in this place, where time had no meaning but what it was given, until the sobs slowly ran out and he felt the girl going still – going solid – in his arms. He held her, until she spoke again.

“...I think I ruined your shirt.” Her voice was quiet, but there was an edge of new stability in the tones now, and Ridge grinned as he relaxed a little.

“It’s seen _much_ worse,” he assured, and carefully drew back, tracing his hands up to rest on her scarlet-clad shoulders. “How’re you feeling?”

Nano’s eyes were reddened – although the rest of her was more pristine than she had been when he had arrived – and she looked pale, but she managed the ghost of a smile.

“Weird.”

“Weird is… reasonable,” he conceded as he let go. Nano looked down at herself, holding her hands back out in front of her – all one shade, once again – and flexed the fingers.

“Okay. Okay, I think I’ve got this.”

Ridge floated back and nodded approvingly.

“I’m sure you have.”

Nano nodded, slowly, then her expression suddenly sobered and she rose up, until their eyes were level again.

“You’re wrong though,” she said firmly, and was an edge of challenge to her voice – although who it was aimed at was less clear. “About what I want and… what I _want_. I’m learning so many things that – that aren’t all _this_.” She bit her lip, glancing round at the empty sky either side of them. “I mean – Jiminy _Cricket_ – this is all incredible, but…” she trailed off for a moment, fists clenching and unclenching, and she shook her head.

“I’m _not_ you, Ridge. Or Sjin, for that matter; or Sips, or anyone else. I’m – well, I’m – ” she cut off, staring down at her opened hands as if searching for the answer there. Ridge raised an eyebrow.

“You are…?”

“Working on that.” She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Bit of a project. But I’m getting there. I think.”

“So do I,” he agreed and drifted forward, raising one hand to rest gently on the side of her face. “Want me to drop you anywhere in particular?”

Nano looked at him, through his splayed fingers, and a sly edge crept onto her features.

“I’d… still kinda like to get back at Sips. Pretty sure I'll remember that, right? If that’s not _interfering_ , too much.”

Ridge grinned as their gazes met, as he watched a wicked mirror of his own expression spread onto her face. He winked, and power began to shift between them.

“Oh – I'd say we've room for _that_ , at least.


End file.
